The Impact of Authentic Videos on Students’ Academic Presentation Skills: the Case of TED Talks and International Business Management Students in Ubon Ratchathani University

Abstract

The teaching and learning of a second language is such a complex educational area that practitioners and teachers must continue to find better ways to help learners acquire the language faster and easier. Academic presentation skills and public speaking remains one of the most challenging areas of language acquisition and expression. This classroom study is designed to examine the impact of authentic videos (TEDTALKS) on students’ academic presentation skills. A participatory research approach (PAR) is used, and a group of 34 first-year international business students taking the course EAP is used as the sample for the study. Findings reveal that the introduction of authentic videos to the classroom had a significant influence on students’ presentation skills in several areas; introduction, confidence, speech patterns, non-verbal communication, presentation style, and even choice of words; Suggesting that exposing second language learners to authentic content of the target language could greatly contribute to their second language acquisition. This is so because such content bridges a part of the gap created by the limited exposure to the target language being acquired.